Gospel Story Finder

Recollecting times of fervent prayer during her childhood, Sister Smith continued: “The day I was to be baptized, my mother was delayed trying to find a place to park the car, so she sent me into the Salt Lake Tabernacle baptistry by myself. The sisters there helped me get ready, and I went into the baptistry and sat down. My mother wasn’t there yet. I was so nervous I could hardly sit still. The only thing I could think to do was to pray that Heavenly Father would make sure my mother would soon come to be with me. While I was praying, in she came, and I knew that my prayer had been answered.

"While I was still living in Arizona, we would get to see movies in elementary school. There were a lot of cowboy, cavalry, and Indian films shown. Indians would invariably sweep around the bend and wipe out a whole wagon train. They were savages. Then the cavalry would dash after the Indians, and that whole theater of Indian kids would shout and cheer for the cavalry. No kid wants to identify with the bad guy, and yet we never saw a film where Indians were any good. I was always a cowboy when we played cowboys and Indians. Cowboys rode white horses, carried shiny guns, and always won. Indians weren’t smart enough to win," Tracey said.

Yet deep inside himself Tracey knew he could win. His parents had taught him that winning depends on the individual. They had taught him that if you want to win, you can win. "Feeling inferior is terrible, and I felt it quite often during junior high school," he said.

By the time he got into high school, however, Tracey knew he was breaking out of his inferiority feelings. He ran cross-country for the track team, and he was elected student body vice-president.

"By then I felt great," he said. "I remembered the teachings of my own parents. I knew I had a Father in heaven who loved me and that in his eyes I was just as good as anyone else. I knew I would be judged on my own abilities and what I was able to do with them.

"Now, through the medium of film, I can help other Indians gain a realization of these same true principles."

I recently went with priesthood leaders to visit the homes of four women in Honduras. These sisters and their families were in need of priesthood keys and authority, priesthood ordinances and covenants, and priesthood power and blessings.
We visited a dear sister who is married and has two beautiful children. She is faithful and active in the Church, and she is teaching her children to choose the right. Her husband supports her Church activity, but he is not a member. Their family is strong, but to enjoy greater strength, they need additional priesthood blessings. They need the father to receive the ordinances of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and to have the priesthood conferred upon him. They need the priesthood power that can come through the endowment and sealing.
In each of the three homes we visited, a wise priesthood leader asked each sister if she had received a priesthood blessing. Each time the answer was no. Each sister asked for and received a priesthood blessing that day. Each wept as she expressed gratitude for the comfort, direction, encouragement, and inspiration that came from her Heavenly Father through a worthy priesthood holder.
These sisters inspired me. They showed reverence for God and His power and authority. I was also grateful for the priesthood leaders who visited these homes with me. When we left each home, we counseled together about how to help these families receive the ordinances they needed to progress on the covenant path and strengthen their homes.

Compared with prices in the 1980s, food and merchandise were very inexpensive. Beef sold for 3¢ a pound; butter, 8¢ a pound; eggs, 6¢ a dozen; sugar, 10¢ a pound. Shoes sold for $1.00 to $1.75; boots, $4.50 a pair. Riding whips were $1.50; spades, $1.25; calico sold for 12 1/2¢ a yard; and shirt collars for 28¢ each. These low prices were a blessing to the Saints, yet there were a significant number who lacked even pennies to purchase their needs. Hundreds fleeing from Missouri had lost all of their possessions, and many new converts came from backgrounds of poverty. Such people were often touched by the Prophet’s kindness and generosity, as he drew upon the resources of the store in their behalf. For example, Jane Elizabeth Manning, a freeborn black convert from Wilton, Connecticut, came to Nauvoo in the late fall of 1843 with her mother, Eliza, four brothers and sisters, a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and Jane’s small son, Sylvester. They had walked nearly 800 miles: “We lay in bushes, and in barns and outdoors, and traveled until there was a frost just like a snow, and we had to walk on that frost. … I wanted to go to Brother Joseph.”
When the family arrived in Nauvoo, the Prophet and his wife Emma hosted them in the Mansion House until they could find homes in which to live.
“When I [came to Nauvoo] I only had two things on me, no shoes nor stockings, wore them all out on the road. I had a trunk full of beautiful clothes, which I had sent around by water, and I was thinking of having them when I got to Nauvoo, and they stole them at St. Louis, and I did not have a rag of them. … One morning, before [Joseph] came in, I had been up to the landing and found all my clothes were gone. Well, I sat there crying. He came in and looked around. … To Sister Emma, he said, ‘go and clothe her up, go down to the store and clothe her up.’ Sister Emma did. She got me clothes by the bolt. I had everything (“Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Young Woman’s Journal, Dec. 1905, pp. 551–52).

When I was a teenager, I was rummaging in the attic one day and came across a pile of dusty boxes. I discovered a clarinet, a saxophone, a violin, and a trumpet. After asking my dad about them, I learned that these were some of the instruments he played. He had a band when he was in high school in Boise, Idaho, USA. He was a talented musician who deeply loved music and making music. His band played at major social events in Boise and even on a cruise ship that sailed to Asia. After he moved to Southern California, USA, in 1928, the band reorganized and became very popular.
In 1931 he married my mother, Clara Jeffs. They wanted to have children. He felt that for him the demands of the entertainment world were inconsistent with the meaningful family he wanted. So one day he put all the instruments in their cases and carried them to the attic. Save for rare family events, he never played them again.
I never realized what a sacrifice he had made until later. In 1993 he moved from his Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, home to an apartment in downtown Salt Lake City, near his office. During the move we came across the instruments again. I asked him if he would like to give them to the Church because of the important part they played in his young life. His answer took me by surprise: “Not yet. I can’t part with them now.” Although Dad knew he would never play them again, he could not bear the thought of giving them up. It was only then that I realized what a great sacrifice he had made.

My sister and I were no doubt the envy of many during the great economic depression in the United States during the 1930s. We grew up in a comfortable home. Our father had a job and provided well for the family. Our mother put meals on the table, shopped with us for clothes, and routinely visited her aged mother. I did not know what the Depression was until I studied it in school as a teenager.
Nevertheless, my sister and I felt deprived—emotionally deprived—by our mother. As adults, we have endlessly discussed the lack of warmth, approval, constructive criticism, moral training, and hospitality in our home. Why had Mother seemed so uncaring, critical, and self-centered?
After I joined the Church, I “adopted” someone else’s tender, loving mother as my own. However, it still didn’t salve the hurt. Even Mother’s death provided no healing. It meant only that the yearning for her love and approval could not be fulfilled in mortality.
One day, I drove alone to the temple to be baptized for Mother. As I drove, I prayed for her. Hot tears stung my eyes, and choking sobs welled up inside me.
The sorrow and hurt I was feeling continued all the way to the temple and even into the baptismal font. But when I rose up out of the water, a healing balm enveloped me. It washed away all my bitterness and longing.
I saw Mother, stalwart and whole. The Holy Ghost filled me with the awareness that my mother had been handicapped in mortal life. She had had an emotional handicap, the source of which remains a secret to me. But she is handicapped no longer. And neither am I.
How thankful I am for the Savior and for his love, which extends to me and to my now-whole mother, who is learning the lessons she could not learn in mortal life. I am eager to meet her and to share the love with her that we both were deprived of on earth.

When I was about nine years old and attending elementary school here in Salt Lake City, all of the youth in the city’s schools were asked to fill out a form indicating what we wanted to be when we grew up. The lists were then to be placed in a waterproof metal box and buried beneath a new flagpole which graced the entrance to the City and County Building grounds. Years later, the box was to be opened and its contents made available.
As I sat with pencil in hand, I thought of the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Almost without hesitation, I wrote the word cowboy. At lunch that day I reported to my mother my response. I can almost see Mother now as she admonished me, “You get right back to school and change that to banker or lawyer!” I obeyed Mother, and all dreams of being a cowboy vanished forever.

As I spread the threadbare but clean tablecloth over our table, I glanced out the window. My husband and I and our two children were living in the small, rural village of Hämeenkyrö, Finland, in the 1960s. I saw my four-year-old daughter, Marika, and three-year-old son, Petri, playing with our dog on our small patch of green grass. My husband was tending to some chores in the garden. I straightened the cloth, and when I looked up again I saw a stranger walking up the path to our front door. She was a gray-haired woman and seemed to limp a bit. She didn’t look poor by any means; she wore a beautiful flower-print dress and a long apron. In her hand was a bulging bag.
My children followed her as she came into our kitchen. “Excuse me for entering your home like this,” she said, “but I had to come.” She hefted her bag onto the table. It was full of food. As the butter, meat, sausage, and freshly baked bread made their way onto the table and then into my children’s hands, tears came to my eyes.
“Can you be our grandmother now?” Marika asked the woman.
“If I may!” our guest answered. “I’d be happy to, and you can call me Aunt Toini.”
In that moment I recalled my prayer to Heavenly Father: “Please send someone to help us!” Aunt Toini was an answer to my prayers, and not only did she bring us food, she also brought lessons of love.
Life was simple in Hämeenkyrö. We had bought a small house by a beautiful forest. I had recently joined the Church, but my husband was not interested in the gospel. We were trying to be self-reliant. We grew potatoes and other vegetables in our garden. I sewed the children’s outfits and patched our clothes. We needed and were thankful for surprise packages of clothing my mother sent from northern Finland.
But as time went on, things got worse. Our family had to strictly ration food. At times my husband and I would eat only potatoes so the children would have a bit more. This is when I started my pleading: “Dear Lord, please send someone to help us!”
I found a job, but it didn’t help enough. There wasn’t much of my salary left after meeting my expenses, including bus fare and the babysitter’s payment.
Though we struggled I always taught my children to be grateful for all we did have. Petri often blessed the food: “Thank You, Heavenly Father, for this porridge, but could You please give us a piece of sausage too, if You have some?”
At those times I pleaded even more, “Please send someone to help!”
As she carried water from the well, I offered a different prayer: “Thank You, Heavenly Father! Blessed be the full bag and 20 marks!”
Every Saturday Aunt Toini came at the same time, with the bag full of food and 20 marks. She never asked how she could help; she just went to work. Occasionally she would stay at our house for a day or two. At those times she would always be the first to get up in the morning to make the porridge. She bought us some new pots and pans when she noticed the need. Sometimes she would wash our laundry by hand.
The weeks went by quickly as we looked forward to Saturdays and Aunt Toini’s visits. I would sometimes tell her about the Church, and many times we prayed together. Marika and Petri were very happy every time she came, and Aunt Toini never forgot to bring some sausage for Petri. It seemed she enjoyed the time with our family, and I thought perhaps we were giving something back to her.
Aunt Toini visited us regularly for three years. Then one Saturday she didn’t come. Nor did she come the following day. Later we learned that Aunt Toini had just left a shop and was heading to our small cottage when she collapsed to the ground, never to recover.
My husband and I and our children attended Aunt Toini’s funeral. We didn’t know anyone when we arrived, and we didn’t know when it would be appropriate for us to lay our flowers on her grave. We decided to be the last to lay down our flowers, to express our gratitude, to say good-bye.
After the funeral a woman approached us and told us she was Aunt Toini’s daughter. “You could have laid your flowers down first. You were so dear to our mother,” she said. “What was the power that changed her? She used to be a stingy and selfish person. But during the last three years she changed into a new person. She was so tender and loving.”
I didn’t know what to say except, “It was love.”
Though it has been more than 40 years since I first met Aunt Toini, I am still learning from the lessons she brought along with her bag of food. She was my teacher. She taught me how to long for forgiveness and how to give service and help. And now I realize that though she came to feed us, she too had been fed.

Tina and her family went back to Orem, Utah, to see the little house where she lived as a child. “When we moved into that little house, the yard was run-down and full of weeds. We had to clear all the weeds and the rocks before we could plant lawn. It was the nicest lawn, and everyone came to play there. When we went back, we found it had all gone to weeds again. I was so sad. I remember how hard I worked.”

Following two years of investigation into the Church, Brigham was baptized in a creek that flowed through a nearby woods. It was a bitterly cold day in April 1832. Those participating in the ceremony could hardly see because of a heavy snowfall. Seated on a log, his wet clothes freezing on him, Brigham was confirmed a member of the Church and ordained an elder. He later said, “As I sat there I felt the sweet spirit of the Holy Ghost witnessing that my sins were forgiven.” His wife Miriam was baptized a week later, just a few months before her death of tuberculosis. After her death, Brigham and Miriam’s two daughters, Elizabeth and Vilate, were taken into the home of Heber and Vilate Kimball.

“I needed a personal second witness of Jesus Christ,” says Jodi Burr of Danville, Pennsylvania. “I wanted to know Christ. I had no doubt of his reality and atonement, but I wanted to come to a knowledge of him as a person and as a loving God. As I reread the Book of Mormon, no individual verse or story provided what I was looking for. However, my knowledge of Christ formed piece by piece as I studied about him in the various Book of Mormon settings.
“I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting, and my soul was flooded with the Holy Spirit as I received what I had longed for—a second witness of Jesus Christ. After church, one sentence kept repeating itself in my thoughts: ‘I know the Master; I know the Master.’ This testimony is priceless to me. What I was given that day was exactly what I had been searching for—‘and it came to pass’ through reading the Book of Mormon.”

In 1895 my great-grandfather, Abinadi Olsen, was called on a mission to the Samoan Islands. Obedient to the call of the prophet, he left his wife and four small children, including my maternal grandmother, Chasty Magdalene, in the town of Castle Dale, Utah. He traveled by train and ship to the mission headquarters in Apia, a journey of 26 days. His first assignment was to labor on the island of Tutuila.

After many weeks of living in what he called a grass hut, eating strange food, suffering severe illnesses, and struggling to learn the Samoan language, he seemed to be making no progress in his missionary work. Homesick and discouraged, he seriously considered boarding a boat back to Apia and telling the mission president he didn’t want to waste any more time in Samoa. The obstacles to the accomplishment of his mission seemed insurmountable, and he wished to return to his wife and children, who were struggling to support him in the mission field.

A friend who heard Abinadi Olsen describe the experience some years after his return, quoted him as follows:
“Then one night, as I lay on my mat on the floor of my hut, a strange man entered, and in my own language told me to get up and follow him. His manner was such that I had to obey. He led me through the village and directly against the face of a perpendicular solid-rock cliff. That’s strange, thought I. I’ve never seen that here before, and just then the stranger said, ‘I want you to climb that cliff.’
“I took another look and then in bewilderment said, ‘I can’t. It’s impossible!’
“‘How do you know you can’t? You haven’t tried,’ said my guide.
“‘But anyone can see’—I started to say in objection. But he cut in with, ‘Begin climbing. Reach up with your hand—now with your foot.’
“As I reached, under orders that I dared not disobey, a niche seemed to open in the solid-rock cliff and I caught hold. Then with my one foot I caught a toehold.
“‘Now go ahead,’ he ordered. ‘Reach with your other hand,’ and as I did so another place opened up, and to my surprise the cliff began to recede; climbing became easier, and I continued the ascent without difficulty until, suddenly, I found myself lying on my pallet back in my hut. The stranger was gone!
“Why has this experience come to me? I asked myself. The answer came quickly. I had been up against an imaginary cliff for those three months. I had not reached out my hand to begin the climb. I hadn’t really made the effort I should have made to learn the language and surmount my other problems” (Improvement Era, Aug. 1957, 554).

It is hardly necessary to add that Abinadi Olsen did not leave the mission. He labored for three and a half years, until released by appropriate authority. He was an exceptionally effective missionary, and he was a faithful member of the Church for the rest of his life.

Matthew said goodnight to his mom and dad and started up the stairs. But before he closed the door to his room, he heard his father say, “I’m sure tired. It’s been a long day.”
Why does Dad always think it’s been such a long day? wondered Matthew. There just weren’t enough daylight hours to do all that he wanted. Darkness, quickly followed by bedtime, always came too soon.
The next morning his father greeted him at the breakfast table. “Son, how would you like to go with me on a business trip? You could ask your friend Jimmy to take your paper route for a week.”
A week, Matthew thought. He’d occasionally gone with his father before, but usually only for a day or two at the most. A whole week!
His father continued, “I have a convention in Helsinki, Finland. You could stay with your Uncle Jussi and Aunt Helvi.”
“You mean I’d get to see Matti?” asked Matthew excitedly. He and his Finnish cousin were both named after their great-uncle Matias. Both boys were almost twelve now, and had been writing to each other for several years.
After hours of anticipation, the flight to Helsinki seemed short to Matthew. Then, picking up their suitcases, the two of them were whisked to their hotel in a taxi.
Later Matthew was looking out the hotel window and watching the trolley cars below when his dad said, “You’d better get to bed, son. You have to leave early in the morning.”
Tomorrow Matthew would go by plane to Oulu, flying northward half the length of Finland. He would stay with his cousin Matti, while his father remained in Helsinki for meetings.
The hotel room was flooded with light when Matthew awoke the next morning. He shook his father. “Hey, Dad. Wake up. It’s late!”
His father rolled over and looked at his watch. “It’s only three-thirty, Matt. The plane doesn’t leave until eight. Go back to sleep,” he suggested and shut his eyes again.
But Matthew was awake now and too excited to sleep. He quietly walked over to the window and looked down at the sleeping city. The sun was shining brightly on the street below.
It’s strange to have the sun shining when it’s only a few hours after midnight, he thought.
Later that morning the fifty-five-minute plane ride took Matthew over the industrial section north of Helsinki. Dairy farms and grainfields broke up the blue and green pattern of the lakes and forests below. He’d never seen so many small lakes. He remembered something he had read about this pleasantly strange land: “Silvery lakes—55,000 of them—embroidering a carpeted forest and strung together with short … rivers make Finland a labyrinthine land.”
Uncle Jussi and Aunt Helvi greeted him warmly. He and Matti shook hands shyly but were soon laughing and talking together excitedly.
“I think you speak English better than I do,” said Matthew.
“We start learning it when we are seven and first enter school,” replied Matti. “Our school radio broadcasts lessons into our classrooms,” he added.
Matti showed his American cousin around their home. They stepped into a storage shed next to the house where several pairs of ice skates hung from the wall and skis were stored above the rafters.
“The countryside looks flat. Where do you ski?” asked Matthew. “I haven’t seen any mountains.”
“We don’t need mountains or steep slopes. We ski cross-country,” replied Matti. “Nearly everyone has a pair of skis. Those small ones belong to my sisters Tuula and Liisa.”
Back in the kitchen, Matti said, “Aiti (Mother), I’m going to take Matthew down to the harbor to see the fishing boats.”
“You’d better eat something first,” she suggested. “I’m sure Matthew must be hungry.” She placed a plate of sliced rye bread on the table along with some cheese and milk.
Matthew had never seen such dark bread before. “This is really good,” he said as he finished one slice and then reached for another.
The boys left for the harbor, but Matthew returned for a sweater. He wasn’t used to such cool summer weather. “I keep forgetting we’re so far north,” he told his cousin as he pulled on the sweater. “Say, I haven’t seen any reindeer yet.”
Matti replied, “Oh, most of them are farther north in Lapland. Many people think Finland is nothing but Laplanders and reindeer. But I’ll show you lots of other things about our country. Come on. Let’s go.”
Matthew was tired by suppertime—too tired to eat all of the potatoes, meatballs, and raspberry pudding placed before him. He yawned. “Doesn’t it ever get dark here?” he asked. “The sun seems as bright as ever.”
“The days are the longest of the year now,” said Matti. “The sun shines for over twenty hours. It won’t get dark until about midnight.”
At nine-thirty, with several hours of daylight left, Matthew excused himself and headed for bed. “It’s been a long day,” he said, yawning, “and I’ve some catching up to do!”

More than 230 youth from the Roswell Georgia Stake took part in a youth conference over the course of four days. The goals for the conference were to help the young men and women of the stake build integrity, improve face-to-face communication, and do good works within the community.
Many of the youth said their favorite part of the conference was the service day, where they had a chance to care for abandoned babies and do landscaping at an infant shelter, along with hammering, painting, and landscaping at local schools. “Each place looked so much better when we were done,” says Mitch Mills, of the Alpharetta Ward. “It made me happy inside that the kids would have a better place to go to school.”

Fans attending sports events at Amador High School in Pleasanton, California, will find the school bleachers have a new coat of paint thanks to the efforts of the Pleasanton 3rd Ward. As a community service project, 35 youth, their advisers, and the bishopric took paintbrushes in hand and alternated 40 gallons of purple and gold paint on the bleachers. The school bleachers never looked better for the beginning of another year of sporting events.

It has been a year since I became a member of the church, and I have been attending Institute since the beginning of 2025. I have always had a thirst for learning new things about God. When I first came to church, the elders taught me about the plan of salvation and the Restoration. These were the things I had never heard before. They also helped me to interpret the scriptures I read daily, which strengthened my knowledge.
I started attending Institute classes every week. This helped me with my scripture study. This year at the Institute, the classes were about Doctrine and Covenants. It was something completely new for me; it helped me to gain a stronger testimony of the Book of Mormon.
Apart from the knowledge I gained, there was another important reason I never missed any Institute class—the principles I learned there, my spiritual sensitivity increased.
In my personal life, I face different situations that confuse, distress, or make me doubt certain things. For this, I always try to seek answers from God. And I testify that my questions are always answered in the Institute class. Every week, when someone is teaching or discussing a topic, I feel like those are the exact words God wants me to hear. It feels as if He is speaking to me indirectly. Just to hear His answers for my problem, I go to the Institute. ?

After my mother passed away, life began to feel too much to bear. I finally turned to my bishop for advice. What he told me wasn’t exactly what I expected, but it changed my life. He invited me to rely on Heavenly Father by praying, reading the scriptures, and trusting that the Savior would be there for me—trusting Him so much that I would feel my burdens become lighter. Two and a half years later, I know that there is a constant peace available to all of us because of who our Savior is and what He did for us.
Whitney W., 19, Arizona, USA

One day his aunt, a newly baptized Latter-day Saint, introduced his family to the missionaries. Soon the Liaos joined the Church. “We were active for about a year,” Domingos says. “Then my parents stopped going. I kept on for a while; then I started to play cricket on Sundays. But my conscience kept nagging me that I should be in church.”
It was at this time that Domingos’s grandfather, who lived in Melbourne, suffered a stroke. He wasn’t expected to live. Domingos, 16, felt compelled to pray. “I told Heavenly Father if he would give Grandfather a chance, I would devote my life to the Church. But I didn’t just wait for him to recover. When we returned home, I returned to church. I’ve been taught that if you say something, you should do it.”
Grandpa did get better. And by the time he did, Domingos was going to church, not just to keep a promise, but because he truly believed it was the right thing to do.

“Aw, Mom, do I have to?” Freddie stood scowling by the back door, hands on hips and holding his baseball glove. “I promised Brad we’d play ball this morning, and he’s waiting for me.”
Mom stood in the kitchen with a bucket of paint in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. She was wearing one of Dad’s old shirts and a bandanna over her hair. “I really could use your help, Freddie. I’d like to surprise Dad and get the hallway painted before he gets home this afternoon.”
Tossing his glove disgustedly on the table, Freddie grumbled, “Oh, all right, I’ll help. But let me call Brad first and tell him I’m going to be late.”
After the phone call, Freddie dragged himself back to the hall, where Mom had already covered the floor with a drop cloth. Fingering a hole in his shirt, he glumly watched her pry open a can of paint.
Mom glanced up at Freddie as she poured some into the paint tray. “Which would you rather work with, the brush or the roller?”
“The roller, I guess. Maybe that’ll go faster.” Freddie took a good look at the wall. It was a mess, covered with dark marks and smudges. With a sigh, he dipped the roller into the paint tray. Holding the roller firmly in his right hand, he made a large sweep with it across the dirty wall. A swath of bright, clean color adhered to the wall with a soft, sticky sound.
Freddie worked his way up and down the wall. Mom preceded him, using the brush to do the trim work along the molding and ceiling and in the corners. One especially dark smudge on the wall caught Freddie’s attention. “This is a really bad mark, Mom,” said Freddie. “How did it get on the wall?”
Mom squinted, trying to remember. “I think you made that one. Remember how angry you and Brad got at each other last month?”
“I sure do. I called him a poor sport at the ball game, and he called me a baby. I came home so mad that I wanted to kick him.” Freddie frowned. “I kicked the wall, instead. I knew I shouldn’t have done it, and I felt bad about what I’d done.”
“And as I recall,” Mom added, “Brad came over later, and you two made up.”
“Well, we both said we were sorry. Besides, we couldn’t stay mad forever. That’s why Brad and I are best friends.” With one quick stroke, Freddie’s roller covered the ugly mark with wet paint.
“There’s a bad one you’ll have to do with the brush, Mom,” said Freddie, pointing to a long smudge near the floor.
Mom raised her eyebrows. “I’m the one who made that. It was the time I had a really bad day at work. I came home so upset that I got careless and banged the wall with the vacuum cleaner while I was cleaning.”
“You were still upset after dinner, so Dad and I gave you a sandwich hug that night. Dad and I were the slices of bread and you were the peanut butter in the middle, remember?”
Mom nodded, and her eyes sparkled. “I sure do! It was the best thing that happened to me all that day.” With a few brush strokes, Mom covered the ugly mark.
The smell of new paint filled the hallway. Much to Freddie’s surprise, he had come to the end of the long hall. Standing on tiptoes, he made the final stroke of the roller with a flourish. He and Mom looked proudly at their work. The once dingy wall was now gleaming with clean, fresh paint.
“We do good work, Mom. It almost doesn’t seem fair that the wall will get dirty again.”
“Yes, it does seem a shame,” said Mom. “But at least you’ll never kick the wall again, and I’ll be more careful when I clean. And if we need to, we can always paint the wall again.”
Freddie looked at it thoughtfully. “That reminds me of last week’s lesson at Primary—we can repent when we make mistakes and forgive each other too. Right, Mom?”
Mom ruffled Freddie’s brown hair and hugged him hard. “Right, honey, especially with sandwich hugs. Now I’ll clean up, and if you hurry, you still have time for a ball game with Brad before lunch.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Freddie headed out the back door with his baseball glove. There was a big spot of paint on Freddie’s neck, but there was an even bigger smile on his face.

Illustration by Joshua Dennis
I was called to teach the Aaronic Priesthood in my branch, and one Sunday the topic was respect for womanhood. During the lesson we discussed that respect should be shown to every female, from infant to adulthood, as stated in the Aaronic Priesthood manual.
Gabriel (name has been changed), one of the young men in the class, said that to him a woman is a female who is old enough to be his mother and any female younger than that should respect him because he is a man. No one else in the class agreed with him, which was hard for him to believe.
We continued to discuss ways to show respect to women, and I told them that one thing I do is give up my seat on the large public transportation van when a woman boards, even if it means standing for 30–40 minutes before arriving at my destination. I told them that men ought to stand and let women have the seats. Gabriel was still uncomfortable with the lesson.
Two days later, I boarded a van and sat down in the front. All of the seats were full when a man and his young daughter boarded and walked to the rear. Soon after, an elderly woman entered the van, and I stood up and offered her my seat.
A man behind me tapped my shoulder, pointed to the back of the van, and told me a young man had asked him to get my attention. I walked back to see who this young man was. Everyone nearby was smiling because the young man had just given his seat to the man and his four-year-old daughter who had boarded earlier. It was Gabriel, the young man in my priesthood class, who had been uncomfortable with the topic of respect for womanhood.
He said to me, “I was watching to see if you would stand for the woman who entered the van. I was moved when I saw that you did, and I remembered our lesson on Sunday and had to stand up for the little girl and her father.”
How happy I was to see that our young men live what they are taught in the Church. He used to think that respect was reserved only for older women, but after our Sunday lesson, he chose to show respect for a four-year-old girl.
I was also happy that I chose to live what I taught, helping him learn to show respect for women of all ages. I wondered what his feelings would have been if I had not stood up for the woman in the van. A scripture came to my mind: “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:17).